


The Prince Among the Fairy Tales

by Sporadic_Writer



Category: Seven Days (Manga)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-07 01:05:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6778777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sporadic_Writer/pseuds/Sporadic_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuzuru hated fairy tales, and he didn't like coincidences much more.  This one is bugging him a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Prince Among the Fairy Tales

**Author's Note:**

> For a change, this is actually a story that I wrote this past week, not an old one that I'm reposting from LJ. Yay.

Yuzuru was again drifting in thought, and the pencil he was holding dropped onto the college exam prep workbook that lay open in front of him with a lightly cracked spine. His eyes fell on the new pencil sharpener that Seryou had given him earlier in the week, and he smiled at the glossy apple-green coating.

He glanced at the clock, which stubbornly ticked just past 5:00, and he sighed loudly as he arched his back in a cracking stretch. He couldn't justifiably leave until half an hour later, not without his mother demanding to see the fruits of the day's labor. 

He fed his mechanical pencil more lead and was working out problem #14 when the thought came to his mind, and his pencil once again fell uselessly onto his workbook.

Seryou Touji, it had suddenly dawned on his sleepy mind, was the seventh one. The realization sent an uncomfortable chill down his spine, and he wriggled frantically in his chair to get rid of it. He had just made up his mind to forget all about it when his alarm went off, and he jerked his jacket on and hunted for his wallet and keys before heading out the door to the bridge where Seryou had promised to wait.

“Good evening, Yuzuru-san,” Seryou greeted him with the same soft and charming smile that always made the heat rise up in Yuzuru's chest. 

“Ah, good evening,” he responded before his lapse grew noticeable. He checked the bills in his wallet before turning to face the direction of the movie theater. He avoided Seryou's questioning glance as he walked down the sidewalk. “Let's go to the movies, okay?” 

Seryou blinked, lashes falling and rising slowly. “Hm? I thought you wanted to try the new dango shop that you talked about yesterday.”

“Yeah,” Yuzuru had to admit. “But Koike-chan told me that she thinks she got food poisoning there,” he amended quickly.

Seryou now furrowed his brow, and he smiled bemusedly. He caught up to Yuzuru and took hold of his shoulder to slow him down. “You said that you'd never listen to a word she said again,” he teased, “because she's always wrong.”

Damn. His story didn't pass muster. So Yuzuru let his disquiet overrun him, and his temper came out. “Are you going to give me the third degree about this?” he asked irritably as he pulled away and strode in front of Seryou. He immediately regretted his harshness, but the fondness in Seryou's smile didn't waver.

“Okay,” he said easily, long legs letting him lope quickly to Yuzuru's side, “let's watch a movie.”

At the movie theater, Yuzuru insisted on sitting right in the middle, where Seryou's good manners prevented him from trying to whisper comments into Yuzuru's ear during the movie, and during the walk home, Yuzuru continued to nurse his soda as Seryou contentedly held his free hand in silence.

Two hours later, Yuzuru rolled around his bed in agitation. Damn it. Why did Seryou have to be the seventh? And why was he letting such a stupid thing bother him? It wasn't any weirder than Seryou falling in love with him by the end of a single week.

But Yuzuru hated those types of fairy tale coincidences. The difference he figured was that Seryou wasn't really in love with him by Sunday. Seryou just had made up his mind that he could fall in love, so they should keep dating and see. That was all.

Ami's disappointed face appeared before him, and he threw a pillow at her before lying face down on his mattress. I didn't disappoint you. You disappointed yourself, he told her resentfully.

 

“Sempai! Yuzuru-sempai!” 

Yuzuru mindlessly exited the school doors before Koike-chan yanked him back inside. He distinctly heard something rip, and he checked his sleeve carefully. His mother had left on Tuesday to visit his ailing paternal grandmother and wouldn't be home until Sunday.

“Hey, what's wrong with you?” Yuzuru snapped after he relieved his worry, but Koike-chan only cleared her throat and turned him to face the pretty girl who had called out to him.

“Ah,” Yuzuru said uncomfortably as the girl looked at him with wide eyes. “Ami-chan, right?” he asked, recalling what her friends called her, before trying to backtrack from the unintentional familiarity. “Sorry, I meant—”

“No, that's okay! I want you to call me 'Ami-chan.'” 

“Okay,” Yuzuru agreed, thankful that he wouldn't have to discreetly ask Koike-chan for the girl's surname. “So then,” he trailed off, wondering what she wanted.

Ami-chan gazed at him for a long moment, and then her cheeks pinked before she mumbled, “I wanted to tell you my feelings.” She thrust a hand-crafted card at him, and he took it from her soft slim fingers.

He read the card and was struck by the elaborate effort in her choice of ink, the curlicues of her writing, and the origami flowers that she had glued to the card in a border. 

He looked back at her, eyes pensive and mouth set in a solemn line. “Thank you,” he said softly, “You really spent a lot of time on this, huh.” She stared at him raptly, the perfect image of a prince cast in her mind. 

“Please go out with me!” she finally burst out, losing her earlier shyness. “You're amazing, Yuzuru-sempai, and I've been watching you for so long. Your archery is wonderful!”

Later, Yuzuru figured that it was the hopeful desire in her eyes that made him say yes. Who didn't like being wanted? And she had clearly worked so hard on the card for him.

Ami-chan didn't sound sweet or shy, and she didn't look hopeful, and she had lost the desire in her eyes when she pushed a bulky envelope into his hands before her girlfriends swept her away in a huff.

I hate you! Liar! You're a fake! That last accusation rang through him the most harshly. Ami-chan could dislike what he normally did and said, but she couldn't just negate him by calling him a fake for being himself.

Two months later, Ami-chan and her family moved to Kagoshima for her dad's job transfer, and Yuzuru put away his memories of her. He also finally burned the envelope of pictures after flipping through them and only seeing the shadows of future disappointment in Ami-chan's smile.

 

Yuzuru poked desultorily at his red bean bun, and Koike-chan pulled it away from him. “If you're not going to eat it, then throw it away or save it for later,” she scolded him, sounding a bit too much like his mother. 

“Here's the wrapper,” Utsumi-kun said, helpfully proffering the wrinkled plastic bag as he continued to finish his own lunch.

“Here, eat some senbei.” Seryou, who had been watching with an increasingly concerned expression, pressed a few salty round crackers into Yuzuru's hand.

Yuzuru mumbled a thank you and crammed a cracker into his mouth so that he could busy himself with chewing. He scrutinized Seryou from beneath his overlong fringe, and he contemplated the small smile that always lingered on Seryou's lips.

Yuzuru couldn't imagine a look of disappointment turning down those lips. But then, he didn't want to.

Ami-chan wasn't his first girlfriend; in fact, she was actually the fourth. Maybe not everyone counted elementary school girlfriends, but Yuzuru did. If they told him that they loved him at one point or another, then it counted.

Ami-chan was the first time that Yuzuru understood how love could betray and turn into something that could shake a person to their depths. She wasn't the last one either.

 

Even as Yuzuru moved smoothly back into his position, he was relishing the pull and release of his bow, the thunk of the arrow hitting its target, and the admiration of his peers. He had noticed a few extra students after the sensei first reprimanded them and then kicked them out for shrieking during the practice, but they faded from his mind as he readied himself for another shot.

Later, in the locker room, Yuzuru frowned to himself. Where were his shoes? He complained about annoying classmates who moved things that didn't belong to them as he searched fruitlessly before finally finding his shoes under a soggy towel that he hadn't wanted to touch. Damn it, now he was late!

He nearly tripped over a girl's extended legs as he rushed out from the locker room. His mom had made it clear that any lateness to the anniversary dinner meant that he was going home alone to eat last night's leftovers.

“Ow, Shino-kun!” Watanabe Chiyo cried out, rubbing her knee in hurt surprise. “I didn't think you could be so careless.” Her homework lay scattered across the hallway with various pencils and erasers rolling away.

“Oh, I'm sorry!” Yuzuru apologized quickly with a little bow, and he rummaged quickly through his backpack for the hot-and-cold pack that he kept for muscle strains. He placed it carefully on her knee and wrapped the straps around the rest of her leg.

Watanabe-chan's annoyance quickly faded, and she began to blush at the gentle touch. “Wait, you don't have to—”

“You can keep it!” Yuzuru called back distractedly as he walked away and then began to run down the rest of the hallway.

He just barely made it to the restaurant, and he gulped down a full glass of Calpis water to rehydrate before he eagerly enjoyed the meat being freshly grilled in front of him.

The next day, after second period, Watanabe-chan gave Yuzuru a replacement icepack. She had wrapped it in a checkered cloth and tied it into a neat package with an elegant blue ribbon.

This time Yuzuru hesitated when the girl asked prettily. But, he reasoned, Ami-chan was always talking about how handsome he looked and how well he moved in his archery uniform. Ami-chan had been in a different class and only saw him during club hours. Watanabe-chan, though, was in the same class, and he had stepped on her just the day before. He snickered guiltily to himself. She couldn't possibly have any illusions about him.

One time, Koike-chan asked her why on earth she was interested in Yuzuru, and Yuzuru, who had stepped out to pay for the takeout, didn't hear her giggle dreamily about fate.

 

Yuzuru and Chiyo-chan dated for one month (and two days) before she told Yuzuru plainly that he wasn't capable of affection. 

They were sitting in a booth together, opposite another couple, at the local McDonald's for a double-date. Chiyo-chan had again pulled Yuzuru's arm around her shoulders and snuggled firmly into his side, shoulder pushing a bit into his collarbone. 

Halfway through the date, Chiyo-chan had suddenly deflated, letting Yuzuru's arm fall from her shoulder to his side, and he nudged her lightly. “What's wrong?” he asked, taking a last slurp of soda and setting the cup down on the table. 

“Nothing. Nothing's wrong,” she said flatly before sighing heavily and turning to face him. “Yuzuru-kun, there is something wrong.

“You just—” she shook her head. “You never hold me,” she finally said plaintively, her voice starting to break. “I have to put your arm around my shoulders. You never pull me to your side the way the other boys do with their girlfriends. Do you know how embarrassed that makes me feel?” 

Yuzuru opened his mouth, and he would never know if he was grateful or resentful that the other couple on the double-date had finished their sweet-talking and was no longer oblivious to the tension between Chiyo-chan and Yuzuru. The girl, Chiyo-chan's cousin, pulled away from her boyfriend after giving him one more peck on the cheek and noticed that Chiyo-chan was crying.

“Eh, Chiyo-chan, no, don't wipe your eyes with those napkins. Come with me!” 

The two girls went to the bathroom, arm in arm, and Yuzuru ignored the other boy who feebly tried to commiserate with him about mood swings. He thumped his head back and wondered just when Chiyo-chan decided that he wasn't what she wanted.

 

Yuzuru woke up from his nap on the sun-warmed floor to find Seryou smiling down at him. 

“Good nap?” Seryou asked.

“Yeah,” Yuzuru answered hazily. He felt a soft pad beneath his head and pulled it out to find the jacket of Seryou's archery uniform folded up. 

Yuzuru stared. Then once his brain processed that it was not a hallucination, he smacked Seryou with the jacket. “What is this? Are you kidding me? I can't believe you did that to your archery uniform. How are you going to wear it tomorrow?” 

Seryou looked perfectly unconcerned. “I made good use of it. You were laying your head directly on the concrete. You would definitely have given yourself a crick in the neck.”

He was sitting next to Yuzuru, long legs sprawled out in front of him, and when Yuzuru was sitting up, Seryou leaned against his shoulder.

A warm frisson seemed to run up Yuzuru's arm, through his chest, and down to his toes, oddly enough. He leaned back against Seryou, and this time, the frisson stayed in his chest and lent a deep warmth there.

“Come over?” Seryou asked softly. His mouth was close enough to brush the corner of Yuzuru's as he spoke.

Yuzuru made a face, and he didn't care how childish he looked. “Is she going to be there?” It wasn't really a question. Seryou had already mentioned yesterday offhandedly that Shino-san and his brother were currently back together. “I'm not visiting your house when she is.”

Seryou sighed heavily, and Yuzuru's heart jumped into his throat. 

“Still so stubborn, Yuzuru-san,” Seryou murmured as his mouth slid over Yuzuru's cheek to fully meet his mouth this time. After a quick kiss, Seryou pulled back and smiled. “But that's one of the things that I like about you.”

 

Ami-chan hadn't cried, despite being so soft-hearted that she grew teary-eyed at the sight of stray cats, but Chiyo-chan did. She had sobbed long and hard with her back facing Yuzuru before she stuttered out that she had thought it was fate, but it was just a trick. Yuzuru listened and then silently gave her a packet of pocket tissues before he left for the archery club.

After Chiyo-chan, Yuzuru made up his mind that it didn't really matter if girls wanted to date him for his looks. At least, he couldn't help generous genetics. But he remembered how much more it hurt with Chiyo-chan, who saw a significant flaw in his personality that she couldn't accept.

 

Yuzuru didn't like it. Seryou was smiling like that again, his lips tilted up and his eyes downcast. He stood with his hands in his pockets as Yuzuru took down one Yakuza minion after another, and he showed no interest in finding a game booth of his own. 

After flicking another look at Seryou, Yuzuru pressed the end game button, even as his conscience grumbled at him for wasting the money. You still had three minutes, it shrieked. Shut up, he told it.

He pulled one of Seryou's hands out and used it to tug him along as Yuzuru moved them through the crowd of people, away from the pounding music.

When they reached the fresh bite of the winter air, Seryou's polite mouth relaxed into a genuine smile. “Yuzuru-san,” Seryou started.

“Uh uh,” Yuzuru shook his head. “I told you before, didn't I? If one of us doesn't like it, what's the point of the date?”

Stopping them under the laundromat's awning, Seryou touched Yuzuru's face gently, his long fingers resting just under an eye. “You're right, that was my mistake.”

“Glad to know you're admitting it,” Yuzuru said tartly. “Anyway, you choose now. I don't really care, and that game wasn't that fun anyway.”

“Hmm,” Seryou hummed to himself. “I don't have any idea either right now, but—”

What a sneak, Yuzuru rolled his eyes to himself as he tilted his head to the side and pushed at Seryou to better fit their mouths together. Seryou's hand was warm on his shoulder, and it stayed there, keeping him steady even as the kiss lingered and then deepened, and Yuzuru felt the heat running between them, back and forth like the calm waves on the beach in early summer.

 

Junko-chan had always laughed so brightly, and she always spoke so boldly in the classroom, in the cafeteria, and even face-to-face with the teachers sometimes. The first time that Yuzuru actually talked directly to her, when he sat down in the seat next to hers as the teacher had assigned, she told him with mocking eyes that he looked very good with drool on his face.

Yuzuru had wiped the morning sleep from his eyes before bringing his hand closer and closer to her face, asking her if she wanted to look good too. She shrieked in outrage and smacked his hand hard enough that the “Ouch!” he let out was unfeigned.

“Oh, I'm sorry!” She looked abashed for a moment before he smacked her hand right back. Koike-chan sensibly interrupted the scuffle before their homeroom teacher walked back into the classroom, the misplaced roll call book ready in his hand.

Maybe he got mad a bit easily at Seryou's easygoing mien, but it boiled down to trust in the end. You could have compromises, but were they really compromises? With Junko-chan, he hadn't been in doubt until the end. He hated that sort of feeling.

Junko-chan took one last spoonful of the green tea parfait before she proclaimed herself full. She slumped against Yuzuru as he continued to work away at his own strawberry parfait. The door jingled cheerfully as more students entered the little ice cream shop, eager for a sweet treat to lessen the burden of exam time. 

“I'm so tired!” Junko-chan moaned as she rubbed her face against Yuzuru's shoulder. “Hey, how many hours of sleep did you get last night?”

Yuzuru shrugged as he mentally calculated. “Mm, about six hours, I guess? Are we counting cat naps?”

“What? Are you even studying, or are you being lazy?” Junko-chan accused.

“Lazy,” Yuzuru chose without hesitation. Junko-chan stole a piece of strawberry from his parfait for that sass.

Yuzuru would have stolen her parfait cup in return, but he didn't like the green tea flavor at this store, so he let her off lucky. His eyes roamed around the store's brightly colored posters, and he noticed a large depiction of a ferris wheel on one of them.

“Hey, do you want to go somewhere next weekend once the break starts?” he asked.

“Next weekend? I won't be in town for long; I have to stay with my grandparents while Dad is on his business trip.” Junko-chan frowned.

“We can do a one-day trip,” Yuzuru figured out. “That amusement park looks good, and it's not like we'd want to spend more than a few hours there. It'd get boring.”

Junko-chan didn't say anything, but Yuzuru had noticed that she could be oddly quiet sometimes, in contrast to the brash personality that showed full force at school.

 

“You really didn't see it coming this time either?” Koike-chan asked, sounding both exasperated and reluctantly curious.

Utsumi-kun patted Yuzuru's head where it was lying buried in his arms, but he didn't want sympathy so he just sat up long enough to pull his hoodie up before he hid himself again.

“You never said that you didn't want to go,” he mumbled into the warm cotton, hoping it would absorb the blow of Junko-chan's revelation.

“Do I have to tell you to ask me how I feel?” Junko-chan had asked angrily in the park yesterday. “Is that what you think a relationship should be like? What if I wanted to go to the beach instead? I only had one day on my own, you know.”

Undeterred by the hoodie's thick cloth, Utsumi-kun continued to pat soothingly at Yuzuru's head while Koike-chan finally huffed resignedly. Yuzuru stuck out his fingers as he counted and double-checked. With Junko-chan, that made six. He wondered if he should stop now or keep going until he reached old age and found out he was still going to be alone. 

“Shino-kun, you know the school rules. Take off that hoodie,” the teacher instructed when he came in and started the self-study period.

Moodily, Yuzuru pulled his hoodie over his head and stuffed it into his backpack before taking out a pencil and his English notebook.

“Hey, how about we order takeout? Pizza and some ribs would be good for a snack,” Utsumi-kun suggested a few minutes later. 

 

“Yuzuru-san,” Seryou repeated more loudly. 

“Hm?” Yuzuru asked, mind returning back to their conversation. “Yeah, that's okay.”

But Seryou still looked doubtful. He held the advertising pamphlets fanned out in both hands, and he gestured for Yuzuru to take another look.

“You don't like the cold though,” Seryou pointed out, his right thumb tapping on the image of large snowy peaks that spread beneath the city name written in large font. Yuzuru glanced at it.

“Well, Sapporo also has a lot of breweries to visit,” he said as he skimmed the information on the slick pages.

Seryou's forehead furrowed into consternation. “We're not legal yet, Yuzuru-san. I don't think they'd let us join the tours.”

“We'll sneak in,” Yuzuru said flippantly. Seryou shook his head in response, a smile spreading across his face. 

“Stop that,” Yuzuru ordered; he had to nip Seryou's bad habits in the bud. 

Seryou's smile took on a hint of indulgence, and he put his hand over Yuzuru's. “But you're being cute.”

“You're being cute,” Yuzuru retorted a bit nonsensically. He threw himself onto his bed and closed his eyes in thought. Would his usual winter jacket be warm enough? It was getting old, and the last time he wore it, he could feel some patches of area where the stuffing seemed to have worn thin.

Warm breath, smelling of sweetness and spice from the cider that they had shared, fell onto his eyelids, and he rolled onto his side to face Seryou, who had also climbed onto the bed.

“You know how to ski, right?” Yuzuru asked abruptly. “You can teach me then. After all, I'm always helping you with archery.”

“You just keep telling me to go to practice,” Seryou countered amusedly.

“And you wouldn't stay as good as you are if I didn't,” Yuzuru ended the argument neatly.

“So, we'll go to Sapporo the weekend after Christmas then?” Seryou asked, his voice soft and intimate with his face only a few inches away.

Yuzuru eyed him with annoyance. “I'd tell you if I didn't want to go. I'm not going to suffer for you,” he drawled.

“All right,” Seryou said, “Then we can also consider it a belated anniversary trip.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Yuzuru-san, I'm feeling so sad now. You don't remember when we first started dating?” Seryou's eyes widened exaggeratedly with hurt. 

Yuzuru rolled onto Seryou and pinned him down, their hips pressing firmly together and their noses brushing as closely as their chests. “It has been almost a year, huh,” Yuzuru reflected to himself. 

Seryou tugged playfully on a lock of Yuzuru's hair and used it to tickle him on the neck. “Did you doubt me?” he asked, and their proximity pushed Yuzuru to answer honestly.

“Idiot, I wasn't doubting you,” he muttered. He studied Seryou's face: the high cheekbones setting the frame of his face, the upward curve of his pink-dusted lips, the arch of his eyebrows disappearing into the overlong loose strands of hair.

Seryou wasn't his first, and Yuzuru thanked his lucky stars for that. He hated fairy tales, and he didn't like coincidences, and that would have been too much. 

But maybe he could handle Seryou Touji being his seventh, and when it came down to the details, Seryou and he didn't really start dating until the Monday after their confessions. Sunday didn't count, not when his mother had interrupted their desperate embrace with her irritated phone call. So unromantic.

“Yuzuru—” 

He dipped down and covered Seryou's mouth before he could finish speaking.

Touji, Yuzuru responded.

**Author's Note:**

> I believe that most people reading this story are familiar with Japanese conventions when it comes to names, but just in case, this is what I have learned and used for the story:
> 
> 1) Surnames come before first names when both are mentioned.
> 
> 2) (First name)-chan for girls indicates closeness or the speaker being older than the addressee. Last name-chan is used when the speaker doesn't know the addressee that well. Last name-kun is along the same lines. -san indicates formality/respect for seniority from the user, the degree of which depends on whether the first name or last name is used.
> 
> 3) (First name) alone indicates incredible closeness (intimacy).
> 
> I'm not an expert though, so if anyone knows a mistake that I made, please do let me know so that I can make the correction.


End file.
